6th ‘Art Prospect’ Public Art Festival
Attention art lovers: this weekend will be your chance to explore one of St. Petersburg artsiest districts, the Petrograd Side. This Nordic art nouveau heaven will experience a new revival thanks to ‘Art Prospect’, one of the largest public art festivals in Russia which will see leading artists, curators, and urbanists from all over the globe join their creative forces to muse about this year’s piquant theme, ‘Food for Thought’.
The Posadsky municipal district’s walls will be adorned with sundry artistic takes on the idea of the centrality of food in our daily lives. Festival organizers want to prove that our pain quotidien is not only a material object, but also a significant social phenomenon that binds communities, manifests abundance and wealth, and serves as inspiration to diverse artforms from cave paintings to modernistic performances.
Try to stomach the artworks’ cryptic meanings, participate in workshops and guided tours, take a peek into mysteriously enclosed courtyards, meet the locals and discover their favorite recipes; the festival program truly delivers on its promise to give you some food for thought. ‘Art Prospect’ will be held on September 20-23, admission is free.
7th ‘Flying is Easy’ Kite Festival
We all have these why-so-serious acquaintances that would foam at the mouth trying to convince you that dragons, UFOs, and superheroes don’t exist. Just pretend that you agree and invite them over to the 300th Anniversary Park, which will be teeming with the aforementioned supernatural beings flying in the crisp (and hopefully blue) autumnal sky on September 23.
Well, in the form of kites, to be precise, as this will be the long-awaited annual ‘Flying is Easy’ Kite Festival, but we still believe that the breathtaking spectacle of hundreds of brightly-colored ‘flying snakes’, as Russians call them, could cure the most inveterate killjoy out there. The festival will be attended by world-class kite-flyers who will host a veritable sky parade, and everyone is more than welcome to bring their favorite kite to join the party.
Should the universal merriment make you feel especially jovial and spendy, there’ll be a local produce fair featuring scrummy homemade nut butters and gourmet jelly candy, as well as luscious scarves and cute bonnets for kids. St. Petersburg’s swingiest music bands will add to the holiday vibes. The event starts at midday and concludes at 6pm, admission is free.
‘100+10’ Exhibition in the Sheremetev Palace
One of St. Petersburg’s most landmark museums, the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater and Music turns a whopping 110 years old this year, celebrating the anniversary with its usual style and grandeur.
Held at the majestic Sheremetev Palace also known as the House of Music, the ‘100+10’ exhibition will showcase the museum’s most prized possessions, gifted by various art-obsessed benefactors over the years. Objets d’art on display include pointe shoes of contemporary ballet icons, Maya Plisetskaya’s resplendent costumes created by the famed couturier Pierre Cardin, as well as previously unseen recordings of the early 20th century ballet stars Serge Lifar and Ilaria Ladre. The exhibit will also lift the veil on the famous Russian patron of arts Nina Lobanova-Rostovskaya’s private collection that boasts creations by Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst, and Natalia Goncharova.
The exhibition kicks off on September 20 and will last all the way to January 23. The museum is open from 11am to 7pm, tickets cost 300 rub.
Cinema events
Whether you love it or hate it, ‘The Greatest Showman’ is the fifth highest-grossing live-action musical of all time, and cinemas just can’t let it go with their constant attempts to lure spectators to the Oscar-approved, invigorating tunes of ‘This is Me’. The latest movie theater (or rather, creative show-space) giving in to the hype, the ‘Leningrad Center’, will once again bring the musical to the big screen this Sunday, September 23. Revisit the whimsical movie or shun the center’s location, 4 Potemkinskaya Street, in disgust – the choice is up to you. The screening starts at 6pm, tickets cost from 600 rub and can be purchased here.
If you’re up for more substantial cinema nourishment, look out for the XXVIII international cinema festival ‘Message to Man’ (sic), which will wrap up on September 22-23 with a couple of weighty movie screenings. The weekend program includes roundups of the national and international festival winners (tickets cost 250 rub), as well as screenings of the iconoclastic Chris Marker’s essay film ‘A Grin Without a Cat’ and Jem Cohen’s artistic commentary on the Occupy Wall Street movement (admission is free).
Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’s birthday
Did you know that September 22 is the International Hobbit Day? (How could you not.) Eagerly awaited by all Tolkien fans, this special date commemorates the birthday of everyone’s favorite members of the noble Baggins dynasty. To celebrate the day to Bilbo Baggins standards, the St. Petersburg Timiryazev Library on Shkapina St. 6 is hosting a three-day Lord of the Rings extravaganza culminating on Saturday, September 22 with an immersive literary quiz so detailed that you shall not pass, lots of delicious food (in true hobbit fashion, you can contribute to the table by bringing your own snacks), and a screening of the LOTR trilogy’s epic denouement, ‘The Return of the King’. The September 22 program will start at 2pm and conclude at 6pm, admission is free.
